By: Loriz Lansang and Gerard Pascual
Colonial Mentality is when a certain society thinks that foreign talents and products are always better than their local products. The term colonial is because of our Spanish and American colonizers that caused the Philippine country to practice the said colonizers’ culture. An example of this is our use of their fashion and products.
Ever since the practice of foreign countries’ culture, it caused the Filipinos to admire this and patronize it instead of its own without having the clue that most of the foreign products’ materials came from the Philippines itself. But then, foreign products are still preferred because of its good and better quality and we cannot blame the consumers for just having high standards for quality.
But not all Filipinos admire and patronize the idea of foreign products and/or culture. There are still Filipinos out there who still watch local TV shows and movies. There are still Filipinos that idolize local artists, singers and many more. Filipinos that uses local products and eat foods that originally came and made from the Philippines because colonial mentality isn’t when Filipinos listen to foreign artists or eat foreign food, this is just because we adore these.
In the year 1565-1898, the Spanish colonizers came to the Philippines while next to colonize the Philippines were the Americans at the year 1898-1946.
When the Filipinos saw the practices of their colonizers, they started to appreciate this and apply it to their selves because they saw that their tradition, products and culture were better compared to theirs. But we couldn’t blame the Filipinos for choosing to adapt the American and Spanish colonizers’ practices because the Filipinos were brainwashed: Filipinos were good for nothing; the colonial masters were perfect. Because of this, it was hard to Filipinos to just forget that is why we developed the behavior that we appreciate and embrace. We admired good talents and products from foreign countries instead of our own and that is colonial mentality.
If colonial mentality continues to run in the minds of the Filipinos until the future, our economic rates may drop since we prefer to purchase products from other countries than our own. With this situation, no matter how bad the Philippines try to improve their products, Filipinos would still continue to choose imported because it is set in their minds that foreign products are always better.
When Culture and Problems Meet 